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Canadian government eyes open source, asks for feedback

The Canadian government is looking to shave costs wherever it can and is now …

The government of Canada has issued an official Request For Information (RFI) on open source software and is looking for feedback and public guidance to help shape procurement policies. This move could be a prelude to broader adoption of free and open source software in the Canadian government's IT infrastructure.

Although Canada has weathered the global financial crisis better than many other countries, its government is looking for ways to compensate for a recent glut of stimulus spending that has generated the country's first budget deficit in over a decade. To help keep the economic recovery plan on track, Canada's government is looking for ways to spend smarter.

The language used in the RFI makes it pretty clear that cost reduction is priority number one. It uses the broad term "NO CHARGE LICENSED SOFTWARE", which it defines as software that is open source or available at no cost. According to the RFI, Canada is exploring no-cost software options on the desktop as well as the server, in categories that include operating systems, office suites, and automation systems.

A brief questionnaire is included to help direct responses. It covers a number of common concerns and considerations that often play into open source adoption decisions. Respondents are asked to comment on the potential for hidden costs, how to evaluate and manage compliance with open source licenses, and how open standards and interoperability should factor into the decision-making process. The RFI also includes a list of the standard criteria—such as performance, quality control, testing, and training—that the government considers today when evaluating commercial software. Checkboxes are placed next to each one so that respondents can indicate which are also applicable to open source software.

Open source software is no stranger to the north. Canada's Internet-savvy-but-largely-ignored Green party, which accounted for roughly 6.8 percent of the popular vote in the 2008 federal election, has long been a vocal advocate of open source software. The party's official platform declares that it will encourage broad adoption of open source software in government IT and mandate that all new software developed by the government is based on open standards.

Open source procurement has also been a topic of controversy in some parts of the country. A nonprofit group called FACIL sued the province of Quebec last year, alleging that the provincial government failed to comply with procurement regulations by granting millions of dollars of no-bid contracts to Microsoft.

FACIL contends that adopting open source software would save money, create new jobs, and reduce Canada's dependence on US companies. The Canadian Association of Open Source says that the most significant impediment that is holding back Canada's adoption of open source is a lack of awareness and understanding. The RFI demonstrates that the government is eager to remedy that problem.

The information that is accumulated from the RFI responses could provide valuable insight that will help the government craft more effective procurement policies. Although open source options aren't always as mature or powerful as proprietary alternatives in some areas, it's improving all the time and deserves close consideration. Articulating a strong interest in open source adoption might also give the government more negotiating leverage to secure some nice discounts from Microsoft.

19 Reader Comments

Open source is only free if your time isn't worth anything. You still have to pay people to install and maintain it. You may also have to pay to train employees on the use of the software and anticipate a bit of productivity loss (at least at the start while they get used to the differences.)

@SmartDev: This is true of all closed-source software as well. The differentiator is not training time etc. It is the fact that there is competition among programmers implementing new features. With closed-source software, only programmers from the copyright-holding company can legally distribute modified software.

You still have to pay people to install and maintain it. You may also have to pay to train employees on the use of the software and anticipate a bit of productivity loss (at least at the start while they get used to the differences.)

You still need an IT department (or at least contractors) for non-open source software too, so I'm unsure I buy that argument against opensource. The company my employer contracts with certainly cost us some money, and they use 99% microsoft products. I've been pushing us to go to linux at the next upgrade after seeing how much it'll cost to buy all the software but I don't think it'll happen.

You still have to pay people to install and maintain it. You may also have to pay to train employees on the use of the software and anticipate a bit of productivity loss (at least at the start while they get used to the differences.)

And the same isn't true for any other software, open or closed?

You are absolutely right! It does take people to maintain both. The problem is that it takes 75% more resources to operate a Linux farm over time than it does a Windows farm. http://www.iaps.com/Linux-Wind...-Survey-2005.04.html Not my numbers, so don't beat me up. Reality bites sometimes, but it honestly takes more time and resources to search out and maintain compatible code for the linux machines than it does the closed platforms of windows. To suggest anything else is simply expressing your 'Religious' beliefs that have no foundation in fact.

Fact is that although you don't like to pay the $1500.00 for the new server OS, you will have to pay the extra $40,000.00 for the other person every year to help keep the Linux platform jumping through the new hoops each month. That up front capital layout is a very small cost when compared to the cost of the people needed to maintain and run the stuff.

This makes sense to me. Keep the money flowing into the local economy instead of to foreign companies. Even if it is more expensive I think the benefits of employing local people to build and maintain software makes it worth it.

There are plenty of other TCO studies that show the exact opposite. I find it amusing that the best one you could come up with is by Laura Didio, who thoroughly discredited herself during the SCO fiasco.

I'm a government contractor with the Alberta gov't. We're totally an MS shop but that doesn't mean that we abandon open source.

I develop with c# using wcf, asp.net etc and I really doubt that there are many platforms out there that can offer the same cost per custom project. Microsoft development platform is pretty damn good.

That said I've seen open source save us literally thousands of dollars sometimes in up front cost _AND_ maintenance cost. We were looking at enterprise wireless solutions for our offices and ended up using dd-wrt. I swear dd-wrt + a decent high school grad could manage an enterpsie wireless network better than some damn expensive and hard to maintain commercial solutions.

We also looked at vpns and use openvpn. Hell even the controls microsoft releases for wpf, silverlight and ajax save tons of development and are open source.

Sometimes open source tools are very closely tied to government systems as well. Take OpenID, which a bunch of use are pushing to use as a secure access point for a federated security login system in various ministries. I wish the federal government would adopt that rather than the stupid ePass or whatever you have to setup for taxes.

I wouldn't trust any in-house government employees with any open-source project. There are so many ways to screw up open-source implementation that this will end up costing the government far more than it bargained for. Sure, open-source software is 'free,' but brains certainly aren't. I suppose that's why government contractors can charge what they do.

Open Source software may not necessarily fit the bill for all projects. However, for the desktop user who does word processing and spreadsheet processing, a Ubuntu/Kubuntu desktop with Open Office will be a near transparent move. The caveat is those power Excel users who will pull their hair out when trying to transfer Excel files.

Open Source does not necessarily mean cost free. For example, I have 5 Ubuntu servers and I pay for 8x5 support for these systems, because I want to make sure that if there isn't a problem I or my co-workers can quickly solve, Canonical can be brought in to help resolve the problem quickly.

What Open Source software provides most of the time is the cost savings of having to purchase licenses per user, per machine, per processor, etc.

My children at home constantly switch between my wife's Windows laptop and my desktop/laptops which have ubuntu on them. One of their complaints was, I can't write word documents for school. My reply was sure you can. start open office and then go file save as..... oooooo neat. No more problems.

Do I have a problem with closed source software. No. companies and programmers are free to make money as they see fit. The difference between Open Source software companies and closed source companies, is that the open source companies make their money from selling support contracts for their products or the open source version is a limited feature set to the paid application. Closed source companies make their money selling the software and support contracts.

One good example is the wine project where wine is free to download and use while you need to pay for Codeweavers Crossover.

They should also distinguish between open source software and open standards (ie networking) and open data standards. It's proprietary standards that cause a lot of issues, but if the software conforms to openness for interactions with other software and the data itself then open source or closed issues come down to finance.

Open source is only free if your time isn't worth anything. You still have to pay people to install and maintain it. You may also have to pay to train employees on the use of the software and anticipate a bit of productivity loss (at least at the start while they get used to the differences.)

I call BS but for different reasons than everyone else. As enterprise applications become more and more networked, a lot of them are just shifting online altogether (goodbye Citrix!) and becoming straight-up web apps. If the web interface is exactly the same across OSes, you shouldn't need to pay for Windows for an entire enterprise. An organization could save a lot on desktop licenses alone.

If they want to be nationalistic, I would recommend using VectorLinux as it's the best Canadian distribution I know. OpenBSD is secure, but sluggish. Xandros' commitment to open source is questionable. Userful allows for timesharing, but it's commercial. Arch Linux is one of those "Pro" distributions, although it's package system is apparently excellent.

Originally posted by SmartDrv:Open source is only free if your time isn't worth anything. You still have to pay people to install and maintain it. You may also have to pay to train employees on the use of the software and anticipate a bit of productivity loss (at least at the start while they get used to the differences.)

Yes, troll, because we all know that commercial-software is self-installing, self-maintaining, and automatically configures itself for each and every user using advanced commercial ESP technology.

Now, back in the REAL world, I can administrated 10 Windows boxes, or literally DOZENS or more of Linux boxes with the same degree of effort.

Hmm... Anyways, since my time IS worth something, I use Linux because I can spend my time getting done what I need to do, rather than constantly repairing which got broken from both Windows' self-destructive habits and the sloppy programming techniques which Microsoft encourages on their platforms.

Been there done that - now I am LINUX (with some MS to keep me sharp) In B.C. we are using Ubuntu (or other linux more and more) I still enjoy MS and spend much time helping family and friends with their XP and Vista problems. I have a real problem when I go into the stores and hear (usually young) sales people try to explain Vista or XP to some poor customer. With the economic crash there are more (older) sales people with some previous programing experience (1970s) who seem to be looking at Linux or atleast aware of it. The MS people seem to be gamers. Anyway it is good to see the Feds are looking at open source!